When Broken Glass Floats_ Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge - Chanrithy Him [72]
In weeks, Chea and Ra are gone, sent to another labor camp. The day the Khmer Rouge line them up I see them off, my feet dragging. I’ve learned to hate these good-byes, for with them comes the fear that I’ll never see them again. As they walk to join the end of the line, I’m shocked to see Aunt Rin also standing in line. My pretty aunt, her eyes flooded with tears, her body thin and pale. I say nothing but her name. She turns away, coping with her grief, her feelings so raw that she can’t face separation again. I let her be, praying for her to summon the strength and courage to fight and stay alive.
In a matter of minutes—too soon—the line begins moving. Before they leave, I want to say good-bye to Aunt Rin. I want to run and hug Chea and Ra, or even just hold their hand one last time, or call their name, but my tongue freezes. Only my eyes work. I search for Aunt Rin, watching her until I can see no more than her feet moving, fading between people before and behind her. Chea and Ra drift away, too.
Our family ebbs and flows like the tide. With one wave, Chea and Ra are gone, but Than returns from a labor camp, a relief to Mak. Again, Ry finds a refuge at the hospital Peth Preahneth Preah by pretending to be sick. It is a tricky gamble. By staying behind, she escapes possible death from exhaustion and labor, but she must be clever to avoid amoebic dysentery, grown rampant among patients at the hospital. The rest of the family—Mak, Avy, Map, and I—have to survive our own way, working in the woods since we’re not in the age group needed at the labor camp. Than does whatever the informants and village leader tell him, plowing the rice field or working in the woods with the quickly shrinking pool of men, mainly fathers.
These days, we clear small plants, weeding out grass in open fields surrounded by trees, one of which is wild, a mango tree. During lunch break under a generous shade of trees—while the Khmer Rouge leaders sit among themselves away from us—Mak and the other women reminisce about old times. Following their meals of rice gruel with edible leaves and salt, they talk about their favorite foods. It sounds like cruel torture to talk of things we cannot have, but there is a comfort in these conversations.
Rice ration is at its lowest point again. Edema is also widespread. Avy’s body is swollen, her eyes nearly shut. Sprouting between her eyelids are her long eyelashes, her hair wiry. Her skin is wan, inflated with fluid that seems ready to burst through her thin skin. The rest of us have edema, but not as bad. This is the randomness of starvation. She has been spared the rigors of labor camp, but still her body is protesting, giving up.
To supplement our small ration, Than sneaks out to fish. Only thirteen, two years older than I am, Than seems to have taken on the role of a grown man, head of the household. Late at night, he walks a long way to a lake where he has planted a fishing net, staked out in the shallows and hidden away where no one can see or steal it. One night he brings home a dozen fish, each the size of a tablespoon.
Mak asks Ry—who usually comes back from the hospital to see us at night—to clean the fish. I pour water for Than as he washes mud off his skinny legs. Mak gathers the firewood to cook the fish. We have not